Paper Revives Design Debate Over Memorial

By SEAN D. HAMILL

Published: May 19, 2008

It has been more than two years since two college professors first claimed that the design chosen for the Flight 93 National Memorial contained elements of their proposal to honor those who died fighting the hijackers on Sept. 11, 2001.

And after an investigation by the Department of the Interior found no merit to the claim by the professors, Lisa Austin and Madis Pihlak, that the winning design by Paul Murdoch contained some of their ideas, most of those involved thought the debate was over.

But the rancor has been reignited in anticipation of Ms. Austin and Mr. Pihlak's presentation of a paper on the issue on Tuesday at the Designing the Parks conference in Charlottesville, Va.

Ms. Austin, a professor of design and sculpture at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Pihlak, an associate professor of architecture and landscape architecture at Pennsylvania State University, believe that at least 10 elements of their proposal are now in Mr. Murdoch's final design.

Among the ideas they believe were taken from their plan are a tracing of United Flight 93's path rendered by a break in two walls, the inclusion of buildings used by investigators in the wake of the crash, the use of abandoned mining machinery in the design, and the planting of September-blooming coneflowers.

''We have no proof of how all that stuff crept into his design,'' Mr. Pihlak said, ''but we know it's in there.''

He and Ms. Austin do not say it was plagiarism; they believe someone besides Mr. Murdoch could have seen their design and mentioned an element or two to him, without knowing where the idea originated.

In a statement, Mr. Murdoch said officials had found Ms. Austin and Mr. Pihlak's claims baseless. ''The real question,'' the statement said, ''is whether this is a matter of bitter lemons or sour grapes.''

The debate is more heightened now, Ms. Austin and Mr. Pihlak said, because when Mr. Murdoch was told by Ms. Austin in March that they were preparing a paper on the issue, he called the panel's moderator, Harriet F. Senie, a professor of art history at City College of New York.

Ms. Austin and Mr. Pihlak said that over the next couple of weeks, they were removed from the panel. ''You can't remove two professors from an academic conference just because you disagree with what they say,'' Mr. Pihlak said.

Ethan Carr, an associate professor of architecture at the University of Virginia and a conference organizer, said they were never removed from the panel; their names were simply taken off the conference's Web site until Mr. Murdoch's concerns were addressed.

Ms. Senie worked out a deal to include Jeffrey P. Reinbold, a Park Service representative who is overseeing the Flight 93 memorial design process, on the panel with Ms. Austin and Mr. Pihlak.